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Hook Up Culture

Since I never touched on our discussions on hook up culture, I decided to finally tackle this topic. I really enjoyed reading Stephanie Amada’s Hook-up Culture for class and really liked having her come into class to speak with us and fuel discussions. I thought it was awesome to have a woman write specifically about hook-up culture on our campus and relate it directly to our generation today. Sex in the United States and the western world is solely based on the male partner’s pleasure and the woman’s sexual satisfaction is completely disregarded and marked as unimportant. This is extremely degrading of women and serves as further confirmation of the inequality of the sexes in today’s society.

This gender gap relating to sexual pleasure directly relates to the exploitation of women in the sex industry, and of course within the world of sex trafficking. Men or “Johns” are the large majority of customers in clubs, brothels, sex tourism, human trafficking etc. and almost all sex traffickers, “pimps”, and “daddies” are also male. These men disrespect women’s bodies for a living and sell these women to men who will further disrespect them and their glorified bodies. Women’s bodies are scrutinized and critiqued in every aspect of today’s society. Everyday women are forced to conform to this need to be thin, and toned, and tan, and pretty, and covered in makeup, and blah blah blah. Women and girls are unfairly convinced that they must fit into these confines so that society will view them as “hot” or “sexy” or “desirable.” In college, girls get all dressed up and “pretty” to go out and hopefully “hook-up” with a boy, whether that means making out or having casual sex or something in between. Hook up culture in our society is so blurry and ambiguous that I think we have all lost touch with what a relationship is meant to be about. I really enjoyed Stephanie’s short novel because it really got me thinking about the sexual double standard and slut shaming and just how confusing our society is when it comes to “hooking up” and everything sexual.